Intent, a new Hong Kong-developed app, hopes to help users better understand and manage their emotions.
It can be tricky being a guy today. For eons, we were expected to hold our emotions in check, and told that a real man didn’t cry or show weakness. Despite Asia having some of the highest male suicide rates in the world, much of that rock steady mantra still lingers today, even as we’re increasingly told by society to be in touch with our inner selves. Fortunately, a new app called Intent has launched, designed to help users gain insight into their own emotions, and hopefully manage them better.
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In a world where data is integral to understanding our physical health, the new mobile application fills a crucial gap by focusing on emotional well-being, transforming emotional data and triggers into interactive insight maps. These maps illuminate the complex connections within individuals’ emotional patterns, helping users navigate their emotional landscape with greater understanding and control.
To do this, the app goes through a process of naming and identifying emotions, known as ‘affect labelling’, which the developers hope can significantly reduce their intensity and duration. Naming emotions activates the brain’s right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (RVLPFC), which helps regulate emotional responses by calming the amygdala, the brain’s emotional centre.
Designed in conjunction with mental health professionals to make emotional health insights accessible, actionable, and meaningful – with a goal to making emotional intelligence as valued as traditional intelligence – Intent focuses on enhancing how individuals understand and manage their emotions, addressing challenges such as anxiety, anger issues, and strained relationships by focusing on three key areas: developing emotional literacy, building emotional mastery, and cultivating connected communities.
Features of the new app include trigger categories, which helps the user easily identify and select what triggers their emotions from categories like activity, people, places, diet, and body. Users can also choose a Primary Emotion Selection and set their intensity levels for accurate tracking. A section on secondary emotions explores and helps understand complex emotions for better emotional literacy and deeper self-awareness, while a journalling section allows users to document their thoughts with text, audio, and image entries to reflect on their experiences.
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If you feel like you’re not reaching your full emotional spectrum, you can even try the Intent Tree, a week-long process that encourages you to light up emotions on a ‘visual tree’ and experience the full emotional spectrum, while regular insights and trigger charts help you navigate your progress and learn your emotional patterns.
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